[wsfii-discuss] update on the intergang project progress in budapest

Wed Oct 3 11:34:57 UTC 2007

hi!

since 4 months i have been working on a community wireless project in
Budapest. i received a lot of help from people all around the world
and the list as well (particular thanks go to Vickram Crishna and
Marcel Hecko). now just a few lines to tell you about where this is
and where it is going. i will have to write a report in two weeks,
which will be more phenomenological and not so dry, and also in
English! :)

========
The Goal
========

The project was to develop three areas:

1. To build a community wireless infrastructure on a geographically
continuous area (to have a LAN) which supplies Internet connection and
comprises a captive portal, all these for anyone and for free. The
technical solutions should be as free (as in software) as possible.

2. To find ways to visualise the network not only on screen but using
public space open-air installations which become part of the everyday
life of people, not just spectacles for a specialised audience.

3. To use the catpive portal and street TV methods in developing a
local video-based media, connecting the people in the area through
information, not just infrastructure.

===============
The Institution
===============

Intergang is a project of Kitchen Budapest, a medialab which started
4 months ago. People are employed for 3 months contracts to undertake
project in cooperation with other researchers in the facilities and
after this period they either stay or go.

The project is lead my me and there are a couple of other people who
are working on the different components with more or less intensity,
mostly fellow researchers from the medialab. My contract after the
first 3 month period was only renewed for 45 days, so it ends October
15. Since i have the rights and the equipment for myself, i transplant
the project to Green Spider, an activist tech organisation providing
web services for the green movement.

================
The Achievements
================

1.

We have a LAN with 4 routers which covers an area of approx. 100m
length, 20m width and 30m height, which means a small street
end-to-end, a small playground-park and a popular & trendy alternative
culture centre. It is also important that there are 5 storey houses in
the street which are covered. The routers are Linksys WRT54GL running
OpenWrt firmware (White Russian version). Antenna transmit power is
overclocked from 24mA to 252mA, which distorts the signal but ensures
double coverage. 

The bandwidth still comes exclusively from us, and at the moment
usually 10-30 people use it at the same time, and it doesn't seem to
be too slow for browsing thanks to quality of service and anti-net
neutrality measures.

We found it difficult to setup the existing captive portal solutions
so we have developed our own, using shell scripts and iptables. It is
very basic, but does what we want: no authentication, no "accept these
terms", only a splash page to inform. it comes in every time you
connect to the network, or after you have been deleted from the DHCP
table. 

2.

We have two visualisations, none of them perfect. There is the Cube
from semi-opal plexi, which has colourful lights inside. As people
connect to the network, the sides of the cube light up one after the
other. The Linksys is modded to have a serial port and the leds are
controlled through an Arduino board (a programmabel microcontroller,
see arduino.cc). It also has the router inside, and it's weatherproof,
so we can place it outside and it can stay as a public
sculpture. However, it is still in the lab and we haven't deployed it
yet.

The other thing is only working when i have a spare computer to
control it, but this will be resolved shortly. The lab is on street
level, and all the windows are covered with moby size leds. one column
of leds shows one user on the network. So when i advocate the project
i can tell residents that if they are curious about how many people
are already using the network, they should just count the leds in our
window when they are coming home from the daily toil, etc.

3. 

The local media initiative is totally fucked due because we have been
working on the other things, but we should already have finished
setting up the basics, so that's the next thing on the agenda.

=========
The Plans
=========

1.

I want to build a sustainable alternative without relying on
outside sources or mind-washing propaganda, so i decided that i will
not advocate the network very actively, just let it spread by word of
mouth, through the portal, through a few screens on the street, some
stencil work that i've done with a friend around the block,
etc. however, there is good chance that in due time we reach the very
fashionable street opposite the culture centre, where there are loads
of pubs which could be networked for nitro growth. this is no priority
now. 

2.

The middle term plan is to work on the visualisation some
more. want to do the same thing that you see on routers for cable
connections: if someone is connected, a light lits up *and* if there's
network traffic by that user, the light blinks. if this could be
achieved than the columns in the window and the lights in the Cube
would not be all the same any more, but more individual, so that you
can pinpoint yourself. for this, we need to look at the conntrack file
rather than the DHCP leases.

3. 

The absolute priority is to work on the video sharing site on the
captive portal and also to produce content. the first video will be a
presentation of the network. the second about using the 'gang' as a
public space, which is in Hungarian the common balcony of a block of
flats. the third will be a parallel presentation of a role playing
game shop and a logic game shop which are in the vicinity. there are
also plans of presenting the recent news of class war around the globe
using the visual language of the weather forecast ("The air is
unusually hot in Burma at moment, let's see some picture from the
ground."); and also to do a vegan cooking show intercut with gore from
the butchery. the sharing site will be a simple PHP hack with flash
videos because of lack of resources and also because we could not get
plumi (see plumi.org) working after several attempts. help would be
appreciated with the latter, if somebody is willing.

that's already too much... see you on the streets or in cyberspace.

--
maxigas at anargeek.net
Indymedia / IMC Hungary [indy.media.hu]
Kitchen Budapest [www.kitchenbudapest.hu]
Zöld Pók / Green Spider [www.zpok.hu]